Profile of Keith Gill, Who Drove the GameStop Reddit Mania (wsj.com) 131
The investor who helped direct the world's attention to GameStop, leading a horde of online followers in a bizarre market rally that made and lost fortunes from one day to the next, says he's just a normal guy. From his profile by The Wall Street Journal: "I didn't expect this," said Keith Gill, 34 years old, known as "DeepF-ingValue" by fans on Reddit's WallStreetBets forum and "Dada" by his 2-year-old daughter. He said he didn't set out to draw the attention of Congress, the Federal Reserve, hedge funds, the media, trading platforms and hundreds of thousands of investors. "This story is so much bigger than me," Mr. Gill told The Wall Street Journal in his first interview since the unboxing this week of a volatile new stock market game. "I support these retail investors, their ability to make a statement." To many of them, Mr. Gill -- who until recently worked in marketing for Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance -- is the force behind the triple-digit gains in shares of the videogame retailer GameStop, up more than 900% this year through Thursday. On Wednesday, the stock jumped 135% to $347.51, a record, before plunging to $194 a share Thursday as online brokerages clamped down. At the start of the year, GameStop shares went for around $18. Many online investors say his advocacy helped turn them into a force powerful enough to cause big losses for established hedge funds and, for the moment, turn the investing world upside down.
Mr. Gill posted a screenshot of his brokerage account Wednesday, showing a roughly $20 million daily gain on GameStop shares and options. "Your steady hand convinced many of us to not only buy, but hold. Your example has literally changed the lives of thousands of ordinary normal people. Seriously thank you. You deserve every penny," replied one Reddit user, reality_czech. The next day, Mr. Gill posted another screenshot -- showing about a $15 million loss. After Thursday's market close, his E*Trade brokerage account, viewed by the Journal, held around $33 million, including GameStop stock, options and millions in cash. "He always liked money," said Elaine Gill, his mother. As a child, she said, "he would get money from those scratch tickets that people didn't know they'd won. People would throw them on the ground... A lot of times there was still money on them." Mr. Gill's online persona -- he goes by "Roaring Kitty" on YouTube -- has drawn tens of thousands of fans and copycats who share screenshots of their own brokerage accounts. Mr. Gill said he wasn't a rabble-rouser out to take on the establishment, just someone who believes investors can find value in unloved stocks. He never expected to have a legion of fans debating his identity online, or millions of dollars in his trading account, he said. He was just a dad with an online hobby and a plastic kiddie slide on the front lawn of a Boston suburb.
Mr. Gill posted a screenshot of his brokerage account Wednesday, showing a roughly $20 million daily gain on GameStop shares and options. "Your steady hand convinced many of us to not only buy, but hold. Your example has literally changed the lives of thousands of ordinary normal people. Seriously thank you. You deserve every penny," replied one Reddit user, reality_czech. The next day, Mr. Gill posted another screenshot -- showing about a $15 million loss. After Thursday's market close, his E*Trade brokerage account, viewed by the Journal, held around $33 million, including GameStop stock, options and millions in cash. "He always liked money," said Elaine Gill, his mother. As a child, she said, "he would get money from those scratch tickets that people didn't know they'd won. People would throw them on the ground... A lot of times there was still money on them." Mr. Gill's online persona -- he goes by "Roaring Kitty" on YouTube -- has drawn tens of thousands of fans and copycats who share screenshots of their own brokerage accounts. Mr. Gill said he wasn't a rabble-rouser out to take on the establishment, just someone who believes investors can find value in unloved stocks. He never expected to have a legion of fans debating his identity online, or millions of dollars in his trading account, he said. He was just a dad with an online hobby and a plastic kiddie slide on the front lawn of a Boston suburb.
Getting the attention of Feds is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
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[I]n order to take advantage he had to mobilize an online community to help him.
One could say he created a grassroots pooled fund [investopedia.com].
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Thing is, if large companies start doing pump-and-dump, regulators can try to control them and make certain practices illegal (often after the fact). Here, they're investigating ... how they could control large groups of individuals who are not a single legal entity. Because if they can't, there will be more of those events.
And I agree with the question "with that said, is what he did so bad?". Is that going to deter hedge funds from shorting in the future ? If so, is that a bad thing ? Or are we going to
Re:Getting the attention of Feds is ridiculous (Score:4, Informative)
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Probably, yes. I had originally written "deter hedge funds from massively shorting" but I wasn't sure about the term either.
That said, there is still a debate about whether shorting is doing any good at all. Elon Musk obviously thinks it's a bad thing, but probably because Tesla faces a lot of short sellers. So why is shorting needed in our economy ? What would happen if tomorrow it became illegal to lend stock ?
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Shorting is not bad in itself. The whole point of a hedge fund is to... be a hedge. Hedge your bets. Bet big in the stock market, but put a little in the hedge just in case you're wrong. The short is useful to be there as an insurance. The hedge is supposed to lose much of the time, so you write off the small loss on the hedge fund but celebrate that you won big in the mainstream funds; but... then if you lose big on the mainstream fund you've at least not lost everything because the hedge helped out.
N
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T
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I have read that short interest was 150% of the float, which means that there must have been naked shorting taking place.
Naked shorting is illegal, so some of these hedge funds were breaking the law. Unfortunately, the SEC has been mostly neutered in recent years, so don't expect any meaningful action from them.
Expect an investigation, which won't report until everyone has forgotten about the whole incident. The report will be low-key and no one will even notice it
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>which means that there must have been naked shorting taking place.
No, it *doesn't*.
Certain brokerage accounts (such as margin enabled accounts) give the broke permission to lend the shares.
So Arthur's shares are lent to Betty for her short, who in turn sells them to Chuck. Chuck's shares then get lent to Diane, who sells them to Ed.
We now have three people "owning" shares, and two owing them, all from one share, without any naked shorting.
Only Ed, however, if anyone, could vote the share.
This is the s
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The Epoch Times had the most excellent explanation of shorting that I ever read. The short version:
I borrow a car from you and sell it, expecting that the market price of that type of car will drop in the future. Then I buy the car back at the cheaper price, give you your car back, and pocket the profits. Things go poorly for me if the price goes up instead of down.
My problem is with the "I borrow and then sell it". That is a nasty piece of business. Anyone doing this deserves what they get. You've cre
Re:Getting the attention of Feds is ridiculous (Score:4, Insightful)
Nope, everything he did was perfectly legal, unlike naked shorting.
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Naked shortingis the illegal practice of short selling shares that have not been affirmatively determined to exist. Ordinarily, traders must borrow a stock, or determine that it can be borrowed, before they sell it short.
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In 2008, the SEC banned what it called "abusive naked short selling"[2] in the United States, as well as some other jurisdictions, as a method of driving down share prices. Failing to deliver shares is legal under certain circumstances, and naked short selling is not per se illegal.[3][4][5] In the United States, naked short selling is covered by various SEC regulations which prohibit the practice.[6]
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What he did is bad because billions are lost and that money is not coming out of the pockets of just a few hedge fund managers that he decided were criminals. The economy is already highly precarious as it is right now and to throw in this amount of volatility will only hurt. Investors in those funds will lose, retirement funds will lose, jobs will be lost. Popping the bubble is worse than deflating the bubble.
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The economy is already highly precarious as it is right now and to throw in this amount of volatility will only hurt.
Please demonstrate where the fate of one stock will hurt all of Wall Street. Bear in mind this was not Apple or Walmart or Tesla. This was GameStop that was valued at $5 earlier this year.
Investors in those funds will lose, retirement funds will lose, jobs will be lost. Popping the bubble is worse than deflating the bubble.
Says who? Others are saying otherwise [nerdwallet.com]. Remember the hedge funds that are losing money were short selling which is an insanely risky strategy to base retirement funds upon.
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It's not just one stock, clearly. Also it will spook a lot of people. Remember, it took just one single investment firm to start the sliced-and-diced mortgage security industry collapsing.
Yes, putting all your money in a hedge fund is risky. But that's not what hedge funds are for, hedge funds are a backup to "hedge your bets" in other parts of the stock market. Generally if you lose big in the mainstream stocks you can still win something in the hedge funds as a consequence to offset some of your losse
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It's not just one stock, clearly. Also it will spook a lot of people. Remember, it took just one single investment firm to start the sliced-and-diced mortgage security industry collapsing.
1) Who are all these spooked people? 2) You do know that it was not only a single, ordinary investment bank that was heavily over leveraged in mortgage backed securities. Lehman Brothers was the 4th largest bank and not the only to cease existing. Please show me how GameStop is that important to the economy.
Yes, putting all your money in a hedge fund is risky. But that's not what hedge funds are for, hedge funds are a backup to "hedge your bets" in other parts of the stock market. Generally if you lose big in the mainstream stocks you can still win something in the hedge funds as a consequence to offset some of your losses. It's their whole purpose.
Did you even read the article or what I wrote? How many retirement funds have large amounts invested in hedge funds that have heavily shorted stocks? If the answer is a tiny percentage, then why are you
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he noticed a weakness in the trading strategy of certain hedge funds and exploited it
Perfectly legal.
But what Gill did was to rally thousands of others to pile on and perform a short squeeze. At some point, he may have stepped over the line and become an investment adviser. And subject to the laws and regulations governing that profession. Even though he didn't receive direct compensation, he did profit from his ability to direct the activities of others.
Lawyers will have to make the final decision on this. Congress may be motivated to amend the applicable laws to regulate on-line advice
Re:Getting the attention of Feds is ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a garbage argument intended to punish this guy. I'll tell you why: If I walk outside of the building I'm in and stand in the parking lot and yell "Buy shares in Gamestop!" and proceed to yell explaining why, am I suddenly someone's investment advisor?
Forums like Reddit are like that. He could have put what he was saying up and had it read by one person who ignored it or a million who did what he said. He created NO expectation of a relationship with any given member of his audience, or any fiduciary responsibility to them, so as long as he didn't intentionally lie with intent to defraud anyone or incite crime, he's a private citizen yelling in his back yard.
Admittedly I'm not a lawyer, though I did go to school for it. But this is totally about him upsetting the professionals' apple carts, not at all about him breaking the law, IMO.
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am I suddenly someone's investment advisor?
Maybe. Just like the people interviewed on TV about some business deal who are required to inform their audience of their interest in the company that they are reporting on.
It would be a really good idea to educate yourself on the applicable regulations before going out into that parking lot. Hint: One-to-one advice is treated far differently than making an announcement to groups of people.
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Gill from the beginning disclosed he owned shares
That is a necessary but not sufficient step.
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Re:Getting the attention of Feds is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a garbage argument intended to punish this guy. I'll tell you why: If I walk outside of the building I'm in and stand in the parking lot and yell "Buy shares in Gamestop!" and proceed to yell explaining why, am I suddenly someone's investment advisor?
I work in a financial institution which is heavily regulated and not allowed to provide investment advice to our clients. We need to rely on partners for that. We have a team of lawyers who are consulted whenever we add functionality to our portals to ensure we don't cross the line into giving financial advice. Often when we question their determination they don't even refer us to actual laws, but mention conversations they have had with lawmakers, lobbyists, and think tanks who give them advice on how the courts are likely to interpret the law right now.
All that is to say it is very complicated what constitutes investment advice and what you can be fined or persecuted for. One of our lawyers once told my development team the most important thing is to try not and upset the regulators, because they can probably make whatever you are doing illegal if they try hard enough.
Re:Getting the attention of Feds is ridiculous (Score:5, Insightful)
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Honestly convincing people to buy a stock, or options for it, is perfectly legal. What makes pump-and-dump a crime is when it is fraudulent: to be criminal, there must be a significant element of false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated claims. Unless u/deepfuckingvalue lied about his positions or the fundamentals of $GME, is hard to see how his posts to r/WallStreetBets would be fraud.
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No one is saying he became an investment adviser.
One becomes an investment adviser when one performs certain functions that the SEC has defined as providing investment advice.
I'm not a brain surgeon but I'm certain that the state would look askance at my digging around in someone's skull. Never mind that I decided not to apply for the requisite license.
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If he was a competing hedge fund manager or a Wall Street player like Warren Buffett
Warren Buffet and some hedge fund managers are subject to different trading rules than small traders. Once they buy or sell over some threshold of the outstanding shares of some company, there are reporting and other regulations that apply.
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I do not see what else he had to disclose.
Then he should have talked to the SEC. There are numerous reports one has to fill out once one meets certain conditions. Apart from tax forms.
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Multiple boats (Score:4, Insightful)
Certain parts of Wall Street like the hedge fund managers are calling for federal investigation. To me that is ridiculous; he noticed a weakness in the trading strategy of certain hedge funds and exploited it. If he was a competing hedge fund manager or a Wall Street player like Warren Buffett, they would be celebrating what he did. But since he is an ordinary guy, he cannot be allowed to do this.
Laugh all you want, but also realize that he hurt a lot of people who own multiple boats.
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He did nothing wrong. Robinhood did, by restricting access, but him not at all. This was just the free market at work. I know several hedge fund managers, and not a one is a person I'd have in my house. Many of them view Wall Street as their private play-thing, how they make money on the backs of hard working people; they're modern Gordon Gecko's. They're used to it because they took the time it takes to understand how to manage the m
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> But since he is an ordinary guy, he cannot be allowed to do this.
Don't worry - they will 'find' ties to Putin this afternoon and file lies with the FISA court over the weekend. Clinesmith just got probation, so the gloves are completely off now.
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As pointed out by Chamath Palihapitiya
But, yup, let's blame WallStreetBets for taki
He's right. (Score:2)
The bigger story isn't about the particular exploit he's doing here with shorting and forcing them to pay for that. Though that is awesome, in both the classical and modern sense of 'awesome'.
The bigger story, as he alludes - is that it is possible.
Because of automation and communication.
This is the story that's going to repeat.
Automation can't do everything - but people are drawn to expand what it CAN do.
It's what we programmers and technical folks in general have been doing all this time - changing indus
This is fine, showing Wall Street's for the rich (Score:2)
Those hedge fund people just need to keep te
Hedge funds often are blue collar pensions (Score:2)
Those hedge fund people just need to keep telling themselves "Past performance is no guarantee of future returns" as they clean out their desks before the power gets turned off.
You're certain these Hedge Funds are being held by wealthy individuals only? I know an attorney that represented an evil hedge fund during the great recession fallout. Yeah, the hedge fund managers are pieces of shit, but they're managing money for retirement accounts. The overpriced legal team was defending them against catholic nun charities, various municipal retirement accounts, your local firefighters and garbagemen, etc...primarily working class retiree funds, various pensions, etc. Remember when
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They are overpaid terrible people, but I hate to concede that their work has value.
A fund manager's only job is to manage risk. Naked shorts are obviously very risky positions. Be angry at the fund managers fucking over the pension funds instead of the WSB people.
No different from Motley Fool, Zacks, etc. (Score:2)
Step 1) Don't think, Step 2) Post it online (Score:2)
and a plastic kiddie slide on the front lawn of a Boston suburb
Um, best move that to the back lawn with a fence and a security guard now that you've pasted online a screen shot of your tens of millions.
His name is DeepFuckingValue (Score:2)
Get it right you coke-sniffing pederast crooks.
Unbelievable (Score:2)
“ just a dad with an online hobby and a plastic kiddie slide on the front lawn of a Boston suburb” is a punchline - literary license. It serves as comedic relief even if its not true for the unbelievable story facts present.
I’m with unbelievable and the handle “DeepFuckingValue” moniker by which he asserts prognostications. GameStop was a perfect storm not of his making. He knew enough to see the light through the crack in the system. He owns that much. Kudos.
Hive mind latched-
Re:helpful criminals (Score:5, Interesting)
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He's been pumping the stock because he believes in it. He has posted lots of screenshots of him holding and losing millions of dollars... the pump is there, but it's an honest pump, and there is no dump.
Re:helpful criminals (Score:5, Informative)
Please explain how this is a pump and dump scheme? That involves misleading and false statements about a stock. It almost always involves not disclosing ownership of that stock. "Pharma Company A is making a new drug that cures cancer and will soon get approved by the FDA. You should buy shares (which I own) before it rises.”
Since the beginning, Gill has disclosed he owned GameStop stock and that he thought it was undervalued. Also he noted that it was shorted 30% more than there was actual issued stock. He clearly spelled out the strategy of short squeezing that would make profit for anyone investing at the right time.
The MSM, mostly (Score:2, Troll)
Please explain how this is a pump and dump scheme?
It's "pump and dump" because the mainstream media are calling it that. CNN and CNBC have articles right now that explain it in detail.
Most of the articles are thinking beyond the sale; IOW, they are saying things like "trying to decide whether it's a stunt or a scam..." (direct quote from MSN) instead of wondering whether the premise (that it's unfair manipulation) is true.
You've lost the case in the court of public opinion. Most people think that this is bad/illegal/unfair in some way, that it's ruining th
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It's "pump and dump" because the mainstream media are calling it that. CNN and CNBC have articles right now that explain it in detail.,
Look up what "pump and dump" [wikipedia.org] means:
"Pump and dump" (P&D) is a form of securities fraud that involves artificially inflating the price of an owned stock through false and misleading positive statements, in order to sell the cheaply purchased stock at a higher price.
In what way is this a pump and dump again? The price was low. Gill thought it was undervalued. He noted that the short contracts exceeded the total amount of available stock. Sometime in the future those short sellers would need to cover their positions. That would mean investors who bought and held stock could make profit. All of this was disclosed publicly including what shares he owned.
You've lost the case in the court of public opinion.
Citation needed.
Most people think that this is bad/illegal/unfair in some way, that it's ruining the retirement funds of real people, and that it needs investigation and someone must be held accountable.
Citation needed. Others say the impact to retirement is minimal [marketwatch.com]. If
Re:Oops [What oops?] (Score:5, Insightful)
No, there is no mistake here. Someone has to pay for the unforgivable crime of causing greedy rich people to misplace money. In a few days we'll know everything about every overdue library book he ever "stole". He won't even be allowed to use the "Don't shoot the messenger" defense.
In the related thread I also predicted the demise of Robinhood. Accessory to the crime. Robbing the rich is the one crime that will actually get some nonpartisan Congressional consensus and action, and soon.
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Yeah, exactly.
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But I forgot to mention Reddit. Another accessory to the crime. Must be punished! (But I won't miss Reddit. Disclaimer?)
However, I have thought of a survival path for Robinhood. If Robinhood flips and allows the money to be stolen back, then it might survive. However for all to be forgiven Robinhood would have to really squeeze a lot of extra blood out of those poor turnips, make sure they are punished properly, and I think they don't have that much blood left.
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I'd say there's, at the very least, a small chance he'll just get "disappeared" before the entire world learns every possible nefarious thought he's had since he was a kid. Then the powers that be can just make up whatever bullshit they want about him and there's no way to refute it.
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"We have laws in Snake-Eyes-Ville!"
(Was that the name of Grimy Gulch after Snake-Eyes stole the town? I gave my Tumbleweeds books to a friend with kids...)
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In the related thread I also predicted the demise of Robinhood. Accessory to the crime.
Robinhood didn't rob the rich, though.
If anything, they obligingly suspended user trading (or at least user buying) of the stock, forcing the price down.
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The hedge fund investors are greedy rich bastards, too. The only reason little people are ever involved at all is because the greedy rich bastards running the hedge funds mostly prefer to gamble with other people's money, but most of the time they can't be bothered with poor folks, so the minimum direct investment in the "premium" hedge fund is quite large.
By the way, that's why I never put any money into Robinhood. At this point I'm more eager than ever to dump all my shares...
But I'm ready to consider the
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Skin in the game because my retirement is going to be based upon big name investors. You can't sit out the stock market in these times, even indirectly, because all those 401Ks and pension funds are there. I try to pick funds that are stable, and I have no individual stock ownership except for employer grants.
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Hmm... I'm trying to figure out if there is a one way rule here. Is it still okay if someone near the bottom of the top 1% robs someone from the top 0.1%?
We seem to heading be into streetcar ethics games? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Or should I make the joke about two lawyers making good livings in the town that's two small for one lawyer to make a living? (Back to Grimy Gulch, eh? Zero lawyers, but they have rental Judge Frump.)
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*sigh*
s/two small/too small/
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Conversely, you have The Lincoln Project. Who are they? What do they stand for? I don't know, it's not in their name. I guess I w
Re:Oops (Score:5, Insightful)
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The "Too" should clearly implied. Who would be dumb enough to think that there is a hidden "Only" that shows as the first word? Not once did BLM ever imply that other lives did not matter. The whole point is to stop shooting us becase we matter. They never said start shooting other minorities or whites instead.
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It's because they employed a technique where you make a I-didn't-accuse accusation by simply stating your stance against an invisible case.
e.g. I can go outside your house and wave a protestor sign that says "RAPING ANIMAL SHELTER CREATURES IS NOT OKAY", but the technique works just as well in less theatrical contexts, or simply work it into conversation.
If you see someone end with "is not okay" someone probably just finished reframing the situation with a villain's mustache, insisting the cigar-smoking das
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"Lincolm Project" is about preserving the party of Lincoln. Sounds like good branding. I thought it was pretty clear and straight forward. Now the details of what they do isn't immediately obvious, but a name can't go on for a full paragraph.
"Black Lives Matter" is a good brand name, it just got trolled and memed hard by the anti-BLM folks, and tarred as a marxist movement (like a throwback to the 70s when anything even slightly anti-status-quo was accused of being anti-American). Possibly people who ca
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And they are a civil rights group. They are not a marxist group no matter how often the white supremecists try to tell you otherwise. Their problem is that they're too much like the occupy movement in that there's no leadership to keep it focused.
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Youâ(TM)re certainly right about the commonalities with Occupy. Both movements are identitarian, although Occupy had a chance before it became a circus of identity groups, each one vying to be the most oppressed. BLM isnâ(TM)t a Marxist movement. Itâ(TM)s more closely linked with critical race theory. Thereâ(TM)s a reason why BLM tends to advocated alongside other causes high on the progressive stack and with the same terminology and concepts.
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It doesnâ(TM)t seem likely he has some extremist ideology waiting to be revealed, unlike BLM. Whatâ(TM)s more likely is that the media will try to destroy him by trawling through his life. A
Re:as expected, this was a pump-and-dump (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:as expected, this was a pump-and-dump (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:as expected, this was a pump-and-dump (Score:4, Interesting)
Look at his video from 5 months ago (Score:3)
Look at his video from 5 months ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alntJzg0Um4 [youtube.com].
If you call this a "pump-and-dump" I dare not imagine what you would think if you found out what hedge funds and HFT do every day.
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Not really... All HE has to do is hold on to it. (Score:3)
All HE has to do is hold on to the stock.
Thanks to the hedge funds who've been shorting-and-distorting [wikipedia.org] to pillage those companies - he's both free and clear AND gets to profit by simply holding onto the stock.
Cause it was artificially lowered, below its actual value, before he bought it - by the guys who are now complaining about it all.
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Are you saying that GME is property valued at $360 / share? About double that of AAPL? Serious question.
Sure. The actual price of stock is irrelevant. You can buy one share for $360 or two shares for $180 for the same money. When the stock price varies you will gain/lose the same total amount in both situations.
Shares can be split where the price halves but everyone gets an extra stock. According to google Apple stock split 5 time in the past. So the price of the apple shares halved five times over the years! But of course, each time this happened every ones stock also doubled.
So the actual price is not all
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Share price doesn't matter so much as market cap.
GME has a higher share price, but *far* fewer shares issued. If you multiply shares by price, you get market cap.
So GME is 22 billion and Apple is 2.2 trillion, so at the current share price, you still need 100 GME to be one AAPL..
That said, it is fair to say that GME isn't "truly" worth 22 billion. However, the funds messed things up so that GME stock is now in a weird limbo where hedge funds owe more GME stock than actually exists, and that exploitation ope
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and I was openly wondering who was driving this
You clearly don't understand the situation.
The hedge funds started it. The hedge funds borrowed way more than they could carry which is a very very risky trading strategy exactly because it exposes you to the risk of short squeeze.
The group of reddit peeps smelled blood and took a very reasonable position, meaning calling the shorters out on their short.
This is how these markets operate.
The real story is that the exchanges don't let this play out and basically defend the original aggressors, which in turn s
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They had to buy up stock at a lower price they have been dumping them for, which in turn made the price go higher and higher.
Woopsie. I meant to say they buy the stock at a higher price than what they sold them for.
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Shorting is not illegal.
Unethical possibly.
Fucked in this case, laughably and definitely !
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Funny how so many people are cheering this dude because he's sticking it to "the man". Meanwhile, he just made 20 million bucks by convincing a bunch of other people to crank the stock up beyond where it should be. What's the endgame here? He sells while the price is high, but the price is high because a THOUSAND RETAIL INVESTORS HAVE BOUGHT IN. Most of them will
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Remember when CNN said it was only legal for journalists to look at some leaked document? AKA "No don't verify the facts for yourself, listen and believe!"
Re:Goddamned ponzi horseshit all the way around. (Score:5, Informative)
It's not really (or at least, part of it is). The big hedge funds had shorted the stock for more than it was worth, pushing the price down. The Redditors bought enough stock that the shorts had to get out. You can see in the stock price when that happened, it jumped up dramatically.
At that point you can sell and the only losers are the people who were shorting.
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THIS.
Mod it up or tell us why it is wrong, you useless ... people.
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The losers are also everyone late to the party left holding the bag. How many redditors drove the price up and lost money in the process?
Re: Goddamned ponzi horseshit all the way around. (Score:2)
No, that would only be people buying now that the absurdly low naked shorts have mostly cleared which is not something Gill ever recommended. The vast majority who bought shares before the shorts cleared will make their money off the asshole hedge fundies that had to cover their positions. Indeed, if there wasn't market manipulation on the part of Robinhood et al, virtually no one who bought stock prior to the shorts clearing would have lost money.
Re: (Score:2)
What you write is incorrect.
They way a civilised society would deal with people like you, who believe things that are incorrect, is to point out what is incorrect and why.
Here, you are downvoted to -1, as if that is how to deal with people we disagree with.
It is the Slashdot equivalent of burning your books.
FIX. THE. MODPOINT. SYSTEM.
Re: (Score:2)
You rail against the moderation system, but it is quite easy to check the moderation on that post and see that there has been 0 moderation. The post is -1 because the poster has a new account without karma.
Just click on the "Score: -1" and you can see the moderation applied to the post.
Re: (Score:2)
Then rank him up and correct him.
Re: (Score:3)
He's an algorithmic anastigmatic blastematic alchemistic misophonic hydrophobic metaphysic polyphonic multilobic totemistic tholeiitic subaquatic pantomimic nihilistic pancreatic cardiographic ultrabasic atheistic microscopic gin-and-tonic supersonic alphabetic unathletic mobocratic cannibalistic aeronautic endolithic dosimetric histologic monolithic nonelastic oligarchic unempathetic tympanitic cryophobic hypnotist.
Re: (Score:3)